Military intervention alone won't stop terrorism in Iraq
Despite the Baghdad government's string of failures in fighting the Islamic State (IS), Iraqi politicians, clergy, media and analysts have been busy trying to assert that Iraq does not need foreign troops on the ground to fight IS.
The rejection of US, regional or international intervention in Iraq is a subject that has almost become more interesting in Iraq than the fight against the Islamic State (IS). The politicians, the clergy, the media and analysts have been busy during the past few weeks trying to assert that Iraq does not need troops on the ground to fight IS and that Iraqi troops backed by Shiite and Sunni volunteers are capable of defeating the organization.
These assertions would have been normal had it not been for their repeated and almost daily recurrence, which raised questions about the motives behind them. Will Iraq be exposed to pressure to accept the presence of foreign troops on its land? Where do these pressures come from? Are these repeated assurances related to facts on the ground, in terms of operations, regional balances or domestic calculations?
The battle to liberate Jurf Al-Sakhar, south of Baghdad, came in turn as new evidence that Iraq does not need such an intervention, and that the only required intervention is providing weapons to the Iraqi forces and securing air coverage for their movements.
The ground intervention — needed or not — is definitely a decision that the Iraqi authorities can make alone, and this decision is supposed to be based on accurate military estimates on the ground and a thorough examination of the facts and basic needs in the battlefields.
